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| VIDEO- CAPTURE DEVICE | Storage format | Resolution | Capture rate, fps | Data rate | Uploading ease | Image quality, original | Image quality, optimized for YouTube | Optical zoom | Included video- related software | Bottom line | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Color accuracy | Detail | Motion | Overall | Color accuracy | Detail | Motion | Overall | |||||||||
| Canon Elura 100 $350 (review) |
MiniDV tape or SD Card | 720-by-480 | 30 fps | 3.6 MBps | Fair | Good | Good | Very Good | Good | Fair | Good | Very Good | Fair | 20X | None | This inexpensive MiniDV camcorder captures wide-screen video. But you'll need video editing software to scrunch the files it creates. |
| Creative Live Cam Optia $65 (review) |
None (captures to computer hard drive) | 640-by-480 | 30 fps | 1.4 MBps | Superior | Fair | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | Good | None | Creative Live Cam Center, Creative Live Manager, Muvee AutoProducer | The tiny Optia has a clip for mounting on a laptop's LCD panel, and you can upload directly to YouTube with it, no software required. |
| Digital Blue American Idol Digital Camcorder $50 (review) |
Internal flash memory | 320-by-240 | 15 fps | 0.4 MBps | Fair | Fair | Poor | Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair | Fair | None | American Idol video editor | The low price and software make it great for kids, but the video is weak in good light, and it degrades to Bigfoot-film quality in low light. |
| Palm Treo 750 $499 (review) |
Internal flash memory or MiniSD Card | 352-by-288 | 30 fps | 0.05 MBps | Fair (for videos longer than 10 seconds) | Poor | Poor | Fair | Poor | Fair | Poor | Fair | Poor | None | Camera (pictures and video), Windows Media Player | Carriers' file-size limitations choke MMS video uploads, so to get even the poor quality we saw, you must first download to a computer. |
| Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX2 $500 (review) |
SD Card | 640-by-480 | 30 fps | 1.4 MBps | Fair | Good | Poor | Good | Fair | Good | Fair | Good | Fair | 4X | None | This point-and-shoot model captures okay video, and often you won't have to recompress before you upload to a video sharing site. |